http://hdl.handle.net/10027/8792 Tue, 21 May 2013 10:29:16 GMT 2013-05-21T10:29:16Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9801 Games Consumers Play: The Construction, Maintenance, and Defense of Elective Identity Through Play Play is a means to express and explore an individual’s or a community’s identity. The individual uses play to communicate meaning about who they are. People perform identity when they meet role expectations (Goffman, 1959). Play involves accepting or rejecting the role expectations of the situation in which we find ourselves (Grayson, 1999). We don’t have to play when there are role expectations, but we can if we so choose. All play has meaning (Huizinga, 1956). It points to and signifies other things. It reflects and rewards the values of the players’ community. If shopping is more than buying things but the buying of identity (Clammer, 1992; Johnstone and Conroy, 2005), then play is the demonstration and the performance of this purchased (and elective) identity. The acquired ‘things’ become the props we use to make identity performances real, visible, and readable by others. This research will look at the effort consumers go through to construct, maintain, and defend elective identities within the environments within which they are enacted—what I will refer to throughout this document as ‘playscapes’. I ask the questions, 1. “Why take the effort to construct, maintain, and defend an elective identity within a playscape? (What are the payoffs?). 2. “What role does the environment play in affecting elective identity consumption processes?” and 3. “[How] do players differentiate between other players and spectators within a playscape?” ix What I show through this research is how the explicit recognition of play in the elective identity process enables us to better understand how consumers approach consumption. Once we are freed from the obligations of necessity—once we are free to play—we can approach our consumption differently. Once we begin to play, we don’t all play the same way. Identities are not static; they are ongoing projects. They are a process. We can work at these projects or we can play at these projects. We can make these projects a game and, in doing so, they take on the characteristics and components of any other game. They have a playscape—boundaries within which they are played. They have rules determining what you can and cannot do. They have pieces, props, and other paraphernalia. They involve the suspension of the ‘real world’ for the acceptance of an imaginary world that—while it is active—takes precedence over the outside world. Finally, games have other players. One of the things this research makes apparent is that other players, in the form of spectators, are more important to play and games—especially elective identity games—than we may at first realize. In consumer behavior and consumer culture theory we tend to treat the observer as a given; as something that is fixed. As a result we tend to see elective identity performances as one-sided communication—as presentations made to relevant audiences. What, in fact, my research shows is that elective identity performances are more like multi-sided games with both moves and countermoves. Elective identity becomes a form of negotiation between the performer and an active audience who are also involved in the performance—or, in keeping with this dissertation, a negotiation between players playing the same or similar games. As x an open game—one whose goal is to keep playing and not end the game—elective identity games involve the creation, maintenance, and defense of different elective identities within a playscape. Successful play means the creating, maintaining, and defending playscape-compatible elective identities. It is through the ongoing play within these playscapes that boundaries are tested and performances assessed. It is an iterative process, a conversation, between presenter and observer in which a consumer can choose to play either role. If we study just one side of this equation we cannot get a proper understanding of the role played by each—like hearing only one side of a phone conversation. We can try to piece some of it together, but we can be more confident in what we hear and understand if we have both sides of the conversation. Thu, 21 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9801 2013-02-21T06:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9611 Segmentation of Financial and Marketing Data: Mixture Logit model and Hidden Markov Model Segmentation refers to the assignment of each consumer to a set of similar consumers. The formation of the sets and the assignments are done simultaneously in an algorithm. We focus on utilizing the Mixture Logit Model (MLM) and the Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to segment financial and marketing data. Both the MLM and the HMM originate from the Finite Mixture Model (FMM). The MLM is also called the Mixture Logistic Regression (MLR). Traditionally, cluster analysis, including the K means algorithm and hierarchical methods, have been used as segmentation methods. Cluster analysis is unsupervised learning, in that there is no target variable. In the marketing and finance areas, segmentation results are often considered as one of the important inputs for modeling a target variable, because of the existence of different underlying market segments, both in theory and in reality. Our proposed segmentation methods begin with modeling a target variable, instead of unsupervised learning, and then the existence of segments is evaluated through certain model selection criteria. The characteristics of each segment are shown from their parameter estimates, and further the segments can be profiled by other variables which are not used in the model. This research makes a contribution by illustrating how to segment financial and marketing data objectively and systematically, with regard to incorporating the segmentation into the supervised modeling. We apply the MLM on one marketing solicitation responder dataset, the HMM on the S&P 500 monthly return data, and on one charity donation dataset. All of the results demonstrate that the MLM and the HMM perform better than the benchmark models or methods. Fri, 14 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9611 2012-12-14T06:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9577 Transcending Habitus with IT: Understanding How Marginalized Consumers Use Information Technology Habitus, a concept advanced by Bourdieu, has been of particular interest in consumer research as it captures the habituated dispositional aspects of status consumption. Once thought to determine the consumption tastes and practices of consumers based on one’s social class, there is growing evidence that consumers are able to break free of this social force and escape or transcend habitus. Yet, the mechanisms consumers use to escape habitus remain largely unexplored. This study develops a model of habitus escape by centering its investigation on technology mechanisms marginalized consumers use to escape their habitus. This study takes a netnographic approach and draws on a purposive sample of African Americans who have experienced firsthand marketplace discrimination. The study was conducted over 8 months using in-depth interviews (in both online and offline contexts), in addition to the collection of online archival and field note data. This study seeks an in-depth understanding of informants’ lived experiences and their responses to such experiences. As such, findings from this study contribute to theories of cultural capital and habitus, while contributing to the literature on marginalized consumers and technology consumption practices. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9577 2012-12-13T06:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9575 Value Co-creation in Subsistence Markets: Microenterprises and Financial Services firms in Ghana There is increasing interest in changing customers’ role from passive adopters of product-services to equal partners in the process of adding value (Reichwald et al., 2003). One manifestation of this interest is value co-creation. Value co-creation has been defined as collaboration between a firm-provider and its customers to jointly create value (Vargo and Lusch, 2004), with value defined as a trade-off between benefits and costs obtained by both the customer and firm-provider. This study seeks a more comprehensive understanding of value co-creation by investigating value co-creation in the context of subsistence markets, characterized by poverty and weak business infrastructures. This investigation provides insights that take into account the simultaneous learning of both firm-providers and their customers and considers the application of creativity techniques. Furthermore, the focus is on microenterprise customers as against individual consumers or larger firms. Additionally, the study examines how socio-cultural and environmental factors in subsistence markets impact the value co-creation process and the types of value that are co-created. The study uses a qualitative method in the form of phenomenological interviews, observations and photography to investigate the research questions. The context of study is relationship managers of financial services firms and their microenterprises customers in Ghana, West Africa. Based on the findings, this research re-conceptualizes value co-creation activities to include a) ‘relationship-based creativity’, an approach which applies creativity techniques drawn from relationships; b) collateral learning, a collaborative form of learning, which has scale impact; and c) considerations of cultural underpinnings during collaboration and dialogical interactions. Additionally, this study contributes the concept of value-in-transformational-context and value-in-cultural context as additional types of value. Findings from this study extend theories of value co-creation by incorporating perspectives of subsistence markets and also extend theories of creativity, culture and collateral learning. Thu, 13 Dec 2012 06:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/10027/9575 2012-12-13T06:00:00Z